Bri­tish banker Rurik Jut­ting guilty of Hong Kong mur­ders

Bri­tish banker Rurik Jut­ting has been found guilty of mur­der­ing two In­done­sian women in Hong Kong, in a case that has gripped the city.

A jury took around four hours to find an ex­pres­sion­less Jut­ting, who de­nied mur­der but ad­mit­ted man­slaugh­ter, guilty on both counts.

He was sen­tenced to life in prison for the killings of Su­marti Ningsih and Se­neng Mu­ji­asih.

Their mu­ti­lated bod­ies were found in Jut­ting’s apart­ment in Novem­ber 2014.

Mur­der car­ries a manda­tory life sen­tence in Hong Kong.

In a state­ment read out by his lawyer, Jut­ting ex­pressed re­morse for the killings and ac­cepted his ac­tions were “hor­rific”.

“I re­main haunted daily both by mem­ory of my ac­tions... and by knowl­edge of the acute pain I have caused their loved ones, not least Ningsih’s young son,” he said.

“The evil I have [done] can­not be reme­died by me in words or ac­tions. Nev­er­the­less, for what­ever it may be worth, to Ningsih’s fam­ily and friends, and Mu­ji­asih’s fam­ily and friends, I am sorry, I am sorry be­yond words.”

But Deputy High Court Judge Michael Stu­art-Moore, who noted the trial had been “made to dredge into depths of de­prav­ity” over Jut­ting’s ac­tions, said he did not ac­cept the apol­ogy as he sen­tenced him to life in prison.

Mr Stu­art-Moore said he be­lieved Jut­ting posed an “im­mense dan­ger... if he is ever again given his lib­erty be­yond the prison gates”.

“On each of­fence I pass a con­cur­rent life term... You’ll go to prison for life,” he told Jut­ting, who was es­corted from the court­room by three of­fi­cers.

Ms Mu­ji­asih’s fam­ily said they were “dev­as­tated” and that they hoped Jut­ting could be ex­e­cuted “if pos­si­ble”, but Ms Ningsih’s mother Su­ratmi wel­comed the sen­tence.

“I feel that the right de­ci­sion has been made, he tor­tured my child,” she said. “I lost my daugh­ter and I will never be able to meet her again, the pain and agony of that will never go away. He is an evil man.

“I want him to take re­spon­si­bil­ity for what he did and ... fi­nan­cially sup­port her son and our fam­ily.”

Judge Michael Stu­art-Moore agreed for an ap­pli­ca­tion to be filed to al­low Jut­ting to serve his sen­tence in the UK.

Jut­ting had pleaded not guilty to mur­der, but guilty to man­slaugh­ter on grounds of di­min­ished re­spon­si­bil­ity, due to his nar­cis­sis­tic per­son­al­ity dis­or­der and sex­ual sadism, as well as his in­creas­ing drug and al­co­hol abuse.

Lawyers said his dis­or­ders stemmed from sex­ual abuse at board­ing school in the UK, and the trauma of his father’s at­tempted sui­cide when Jut­ting was 16.

How­ever, the pros­e­cu­tion ar­gued that he was able to form judge­ments and ex­er­cise self con­trol, cit­ing the fact that he had filmed Ms Ningsih’s tor­ture on his phone.

He also filmed him­self dis­cussing the killings and his sex­ual fan­tasies. The videos were shown to the jury of four women and five men dur­ing the trial.